We last saw Homeland's Brody fleeing to Canada with the help of agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) after the attack on the CIA's headquarters in Virginia. All the evidence points towards him -the bomb parts in his car, the Al Queda suicide video - but is there more to this than meets the eye?

Fans of Homeland won't actually get their next glimpse of Brody until episode three of the new season, which picks up two months after the bombs and sees the Senate Intelligence Committee understandably wanting heads to roll at the CIA for its inability to prevent the tragedy.

"Carrie's in a very vulnerable place," executive producer Howard Gordon tells TV Guide, "She's being taken to task for her intelligence failures, bad judgment, mental illness, the whole nine yards," adds Danes, "Carrie is very isolated throughout this season. I was very stranded as a character and an actor."

"When I learned I wouldn't be in the first two episodes, I thought, 'God, how are they going to write them without Brody?'" says Emmy-winning actor Damian Lewis, "But when I read the scripts, I didn't miss him for a second. There's so much great story."

You'll remember that Carrie almost went crazy in season one, trying to convince the CIA that one of America's war heroes was actually a terrorist - well, this time she's trying to convince the same organization that the same alleged terrorist is innocent in the CIA explosion. "Carrie's in a deep hole," Gordon says, "but there are tons of reversals and twists and turns done at a very deep character level."

Though Homeland is easily one of the most popular shows on U.S. television, season two was guilty of too many over-the-top moments - something apparently fixed in the forthcoming season, which "will feature the more contemplative pace of a John le Carré novel."

"Every show that aspires to be good has to reinvent itself each year," says executive producer Alex Gansa. "We covered a lot of ground in the first year and even more in the second season. But you can't just keep doing the same things. It gets boring, not only for the audience but for the people who are making the show."